Effect of dyeing on antibacterial efficiency of silver coated cotton fabrics

Despite numerous investigations during recent decades in the field of antimicrobial treating textile fibers using silver, many obscurities remain regarding the durability and dyeing ability and the influences of dyeing on the antimicrobial effectiveness of silver-treated fibers. In this research work, the cotton fabrics were sputtered using DC magnetron sputtering system for different times of exposure by silver. Then the silver coated samples were dyed by different classes of synthetic and natural dyes. The dye ability of coated samples was compared with untreated cotton. The reflective spectrophotometer was used for this purpose. The morphology of the cotton fabrics before and after dyeing was observed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The antibacterial activity of samples before and after dyeing, were investigated and compared. For antibacterial investigation, the antibacterial counting tests were used. It was concluded that, dyeing does not have any negative effect on antibacterial activity of coated samples and very good antibacterial activity was achieved after dyeing.